Cristie Hurd

Cristie Hurd is:
•Mother of Lauren and Dave
•Companion of dog Sam
•Food provider to 4 carp
•Nemesis of garlic mustard and European buckthorn

•Resident of Middleton, Wisconsin
•Transplant from Chicagoland, New England, and the rocky mountain front range

•A trained scientist of animal behavior
•A working philosopher
That is I philosophize while I’m at work

The two primary questions of my philosophical inquiry are:
1. What is “a life”?
And given any current answer to this question…
2. What is the best way to live?

For forty years I have considered these questions from religious, philosophical, and biological perspectives. I’ve earned the diplomas to prove it. In addition to formal education, I’ve sought answers by surrounding myself with people whose lives are very different from mine. For several years I was employed helping low-income and high-risk teens acquire basic job skills. I taught English-as-a-Second-Language courses to all ages of immigrants from all over the world. But despite differences in background, I quickly saw that people are people…more similar than they are different. Anyway, humans make up only a minute fraction of the googolplex-plus of lifeforms that live on our planet.

So what is life like when you’re NOT human? To answer this, I spent numerous days to years interacting with rattlesnakes, rats, dogs, cats, fish, rabbits, horses, hamsters, giraffes, hydra, wild birds, ants, and yellowjacket wasps. My most extensive study was with the latter ─ the wasps. For several years I spent the summer months in an outdoor tent that housed colonies of yellowjackets. (Yellowjackets are those black and yellow stinging insects that try to drink your soda and bother you at picnics.) I painted their backs so I could tell them apart. Then I watched them interact with each other. There are no CEO’s or supervisors in a social insect colony, so I looked for patterns that would indicate how each individual made decisions about which work to do and how fast do it. I found no two yellowjackets are alike; most are lazy, and a few are phenomenally industrious.

To understand the dynamics of this self-organized labor, I educated myself in complexity theory. Complexity science is an interdisciplinary field in which biologists, physicists, chemists, mathematicians, psychologists, sociologists, economists, and computer scientists research the structure and behavior of complex systems. I applied components of this theory to my social insect research which I then published in scientific journals. I’ve found complexity theory so helpful in understanding how human organizations develop and behave that I have given several talks on how to teach basic complexity principles to high school and college students.

My study of complex systems led to a fascination with microeconomics. And now I’m in a wonderful job in which I participate in the emergence of a self-sustaining organization. I work for a small, growing company with the social vision that if each person does what he or she is best at and we connect our labors together, then something greater than any one of us will emerge, and we all will prosper. It’s a simple idea, but so powerful that animal species employing it have persisted for over 100 million years. Linda Remeschatis built a company based on the principle. And although she may not have labeled the principle in her head, she knew it in her heart.

Wisconsinmade.com started when Linda and her husband, Rick, began touring Wisconsin seeking out local art, food, and fun. The exquisite craftsmanship they discovered, and the care and attention to detail they saw Wisconsin artists pour into their work impressed them. These artists were trying to ‘make a living’ by living their passions. And that was the difficulty. First-rate craftsmanship is an all-consuming endeavor. Many of the artists didn’t have the time or skills to market and sell their work. The economic necessities of earning money to pay the rent and put food on the table meant that, for some artists, their gifts of themselves to the world would forever be small-scale hobbies.

And that’s where Linda and Rick come in. Their gifts are acumen in business organization, legal affairs, public relations, and corporate finance. As natives of Wisconsin they deeply care about the people here. Since 1999 they’ve devoted their specialized skills to help Wisconsin artists become economically self-sustaining artists. And as Wisconsinmade.com has grown as an organization, it has come to sustain a small support staff as well.

Linda founded Wisconsinmade.com on the idea that if we link our talents together, our gifts will reach the world. It’s the antithesis to ‘hiding our light under a bushel’. And you who appreciate our artists and their Wisconsin spirit are part of this great effort. After all, a gift gone unnoticed is hardly a gift.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and learn who we are. You may wonder what all this has to do with food-fun. Well for me, the fun of food is not in a concoction’s flavor, but in the good times it creates for those with whom it is shared. In my extensive study of life, the only conclusion of which I am absolutely certain is that life is precious. Life is so fleeting and fragile, its very existence is cause for marvel and celebration. People everywhere celebrate the great moments of life ─ the births, the marriages, the deaths ─ and all the wonderful moments in-between, with food. So in this blog, I celebrate food and the fun it brings to life.